Check Out the CEO's Paycheck

As images of holiday bonuses dance through our heads, we thought it was a good time to look at the compensation of a handful of the semiconductor industry's CEOs. We found packages that ranged from less than $3 million to nearly $20 million.

To put that in perspective, the average pay of 327 CEOs of the biggest companies in the U.S. was $12.3 million in 2012, including salaries, bonuses, perks, stock awards, stock options and other incentives. That's according to research conducted by the AFL-CIO. The worker's union also reported that the CEO of an S&P 500 Index company made, on average, 354 times the wage of a rank-and-file U.S. worker in 2012.

There is no legislation capping pay for executives in what IC Insights says are the countries that produce most of the world's semiconductors -- Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States. However, several other countries are considering limits to executive pay.

In the U.S. the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed in September a new rule that would require public companies to disclose the ratio of the compensation of its chief executive to the median compensation of its employees.

In November, Swiss voters rejected a proposal to curb executive compensation. The "1:12 -- for fair wages" initiative, which proposed capping executive salaries at 12 times the level of the lowest paid employee, was rejected by 65.3 percent of voters. It failed to win majority support in any of the country's 26 districts, CNN reported .

European Union officials are working to limit bonuses for bankers earning more than 500,000 euros ($678,000) a year, limiting bonuses to twice the executive’s annual salary. The proposal would affect more than 35,000 bankers around the world and is being challenged by the British government.

In Germany, Europe’s largest fiscally solvent country, officials vowed to take up pay inequity in the next parliamentary session. Chancellor Angela Merkel stated that “exorbitance cannot be allowed in a free and socially minded society.”

As of September 2013, CEOs of French state firms cannot make more than 20 times the salaries the lowest-paid employee earns. Thus salaries are capped at around $600,000, NPR reported. Meanwhile, Dutch officials announced new legislation that would cap golden parachutes at a maximum of 75,000 euros ($98,000).

With this perspective we invite you to click through the following pages to read what some of the top semiconductor companies are paying their chief executive officers.

Yes they are big, but not nearly so breathtaking as some high tech execs such as Oracle's Larry Ellison who reportedly took home nearly $100 million in 2012. Ka-ching!

There is too much disparity in the salaries in US than Europe. I think that it has to do with rules and regulation. The same rules and regulations can be applied in US and i donot agree with those distractors that say the companies will loose out with competitors. I thinks the management in Europe is on par with US at a much lower cost.

A lot of good points here from all sides. Yes, a good CEO is worth a lot, but how much is a lot? and what is wrong with offering the workers stock options at the same rate per $ paid? and if the company goes belly up, aren't the workers entitled to the same golden parachute protection that the CEO is (again proportional to their pay?)

I like Dr Marty's idea of voluntary reporting of metrics, but to overcome the greed of these guys I think a bit more stick is necessary. Ratios between lowest / highest pay are a good idea and simple to implement. As are enforcing CEO pay rises be no more than the workers get. I recently got 2.5%, around the inflation figure so does not mean much, after a long fight, with the union threatening industrial action. Our CEO got 25% with no such struggle. "How to demoralise your workforce: 101".

Ad D. McCunney says, it would be meaningless to distribute the CEO's excess to the workers. But by mandating that all workers get the same stock options as the CEO, and putting that money towards the dividends, everyone has an incentive to do their best. Carrots alone don't work with greedy CEO's, some stick is needed.

I would rather see this question tackled in the context of Corporate Social Responsibility where organizations voluntarily publish key metrics. Examples could be the mode, median and mean salary of all employees with respect to that of the CEO (and executive team) but I'm sure there are probably other metrics too; or someone could even come up with an index that somehow munges all these metrics into a single figure that over time, would have some meaning.

Bert, I totally agree. I wouldn't want the job, but I can't complain too much about their salary. It does tend to be kind of like the government. You have the board and CEO making the rules and voting themselves raises. It is a gravy train until bad times, like when the company or country goes bankrupt. Then they have their golden parachute and the little people suffer.

Of course, board members tend to be top execs from other companies, also paid way more than the average worker, so it's not surprising that they scratch each others' backs.

Still, having the CEO of a company with ~100,000 employees or more paid a few hundred time more than the average worker means that it's not so much a question of his salary affecting negatively the workers' salaries. It's more a question of basic fairness, common sense, and you know, decency. Those intangibles.

I'd deteste doing their job, so I'm not envious by any means. A life of meetings, hustling, and gladhanding, doesn't sound appealing. I just don't want to hear them pontificating at me about ethics.

I am also of the opinion that the compensation packages of the CEO's in public companies should not be legislated by any government at all. Instead, the shareholders have that right to exercise. To that end, the SEC's proposed requirement to list the ratio of CEO's vs. median salary of employees is a good idea that can provide feedbacks to any shareholder action.